By McKinsleigh Smith
Photos courtesy of Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group
After four decades, 400 million audience members, and shows across 86 countries, Cirque du Soleil finally brings its magic to Salt Lake City. Cirque du Soleil’s ’Twas the Night Before… is rolling into the Eccles Theater December 4 through December 14, and the production hits like a peppermint-scented fever dream.
The show takes Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem A Visit from St. Nicholas and rebuilds it as a runaway winter fantasy, where Isabella, a kid who swears she’s aged out of family traditions, gets yanked into a snowstorm that tears her away from her dad. What follows is a blizzard-born odyssey through a wonderland packed with acrobats, reindeer, wide-eyed kids, and characters that feel like they crawled straight out of your most chaotic holiday memories.
Behind all that sparkle and strange magic is one of the world’s best makeup and hair departments. Thirteen makeup concepts rotate through the show. The costumes are hand-crafted like they are for all of Cirque du Soleil’s productions. This show features 52 different looks, from a fully handmade Santa suit to eight reindeer getups bedazzled with 2,000 sequins apiece.
The show might roll with a tighter squad than Cirque’s usual mega-productions, but it’s still rigorous and technically demanding. It takes 800 man hours to load in 100 tons of gear, and if you lined up their cables end-to-end, they’d stretch five miles.
The acts feature roller skaters whipping around at 30 mph on a six-foot platform, diabolos spinning 20 turns per second, a hair suspension artist rotating 100 times while her hair absorbs 250 pounds of pressure.
The soundtrack to all this spectacle comes from composer Jean-Phi Goncalves, teaming with Paul Bisson. The show contains 41 pieces of music: 29 originals and 12 reimagined classics like “Silent Night” and “Deck the Halls.”
Tickets for the Eccles performances are going fast. Snag yours here!